Jodie Taylor’s Just One Damned Thing After Another is a fantastic read. The opening of a series, it’s a story about disaster-prone historians and their exploits at research with, well, time machines. It’s a combination pretty much guaranteed to deliver action and disaster, and Taylor’s book does just that. That, however, isn’t the defining characteristic of the book. Where the author really excels is in the characters, and the book is full of wonderful, believable characters – a treasure trove of vivid personalities with more sense of adventure than judgement or wisdom, and foremost among them is the novel’s protagonist, Max, whose eyes we see historial research institute of St Mary’s for the first time as she joins a motley bunch of quirky characters.

The novel’s fast-paced but loses nothing because of it. The author’s great at getting to the essence of characters very quickly, and the book grabs you by the scruff of the neck in the first chapter and doesn’t let up until the end. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, but the book is sharp, funny, and thoroughly absorbing.

After a break from reading, I felt like picking up something entertaining, and this book was more than up to the task. I read it in under 24 hours and am already itching to find out what happens in the next volume of The Chronicles of St Mary’s.

Bryan Wigmore’s The Goddess Project is an outstanding debut and a wonderful story – perhaps even more so because it defies easy categorisation. At its heart are great, believable characters – both good and bad – in a richly described setting, with a wonderful plot that remains unpredictable and intriguing right to the end of the novel. Together, these elements combine to offer something that feels unique and original, a novel unlike anything I’ve read before.

The story develops quickly, revealing itself chapter by chapter. It begins as a tale about freediving treasure-seekers, but it soon becomes clear there’s so much more to the tale: magic, technology, adventure, a conspiracy, and a central mystery that drew me in and kept me hooked. After the initial setup, the book was incredibly hard to put down and proved to be a great read. I’m already looking forward to the author’s next book, and would recommend this to anyone who loves great Fantasy. This, to me, is how Fantasy should be: a magical tale that transports you to another place.

The project to self-publish my debut trilogy – something I’ve been informally calling “Project Insanity” – has now passed another milestone. This week I received the final cover art files from my fantastic cover artist, the incredible Tom Edwards. It’s been a great experience watching as the covers took shape, with a theme across the trilogy, and receiving those final files was something of a special moment. Suddenly the whole project now feels so much more real: the last few months editing and revising the manuscripts have been hard work (a rather punishing schedule combined with illness and distinct lack of love for editing) and pressing on with a narrow focus became my method for getting stuff done. A big project like this can be daunting, especially if it’s your first time on the author roundabout, and it’s easy to look up and start worrying about all the other things that need to be done before release day. So I’ve kept my head down, focused on the next chapter and the next and the next. But now, something’s changed.

Now I can see the end and the finished product with those magnificent covers. And it feels like I’m already there, that maybe I can take some time to sit back and bask in my (well, Tom’s in this case) awesomeness: journey’s end, job done, grab a beer. But although this feels like an achievement, the job is still only half done, and with just over three months to go I still have plenty to do: there are copies to order for proofing, some interior formatting that needs to be done, and lots more to keep me busy. Three months and three novels to proof read and correct: still achievable, but Project Insanity is living up to its name. The difference now is that those lovely covers have lifted my spirits and now I’m kind of loving the project. There’ll be a mad sprint at the end, I’m sure, but I’m on track for the moment and looking forward to the next challenges.

Cixin Liu’s The Dark Forest is a different beast to its predecessor, The Three-Body Problem. The second book in The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, I came to The Dark Forest several months after reading the first book. Much of The Three-Body Problem was framed around a computer simulation/game – it was an integral part of the plot and something I really liked about the book – but events in that book meant that The Dark Forest was always going to be different stylistically. In truth, I wondered if it could match up to its superb predecessor; I didn’t think it was likely.

But sometimes it’s nice to be wrong. The Dark Forest is a very different book to its predecessor, but is no less brilliant for it. The author manages perfectly well without the game, and instead the focus of the story shifts to something else (to say more might spoil things) while carrying on the stories of characters from the first volume of the trilogy and introducing new characters, new challenges, and new concepts for the characters to wrestle with.

My first experience of what I call “Trilogy Fatigue” was while writing what will soon be published as the Angelwar trilogy. I wrote it over three years, my first foray into a trilogy, and my first experience of writing and living with the same group of characters for an extended period. By the early stages of Book 3, trilogy fatigue had set it. I had ideas – lots of shiny ideas – and like a magpie I was drawn to them. But… there was still a story to finish, still a story to tell. Sure, it’s possible to leave it and return a year later, but I was never sure whether the book would suffer for it: would my writing style be vastly different, would I keep finding other projects and leave this unfinished? I took the safe path, and stuck with the manuscript, writing the whole trilogy back to back and I’m glad I did because it felt like so much more of an accomplishment when it was finally complete.

And now, in the midst of final edits and revisions, trilogy fatigue has struck again. Probably, I think, at around the same point in the trilogy. There have been long nights after work, and busy weekends, and now I can feel the early stages of burnout. But I’m into Book 3, on the home strait. Just a little longer and this phase of the project will be complete. And that, I think, will be a good feeling, and the knowledge that at the end of this journey I’ll have 3 books released in paperback and e-book is another incentive. It’s time to have a quiet word with myself, and get back to work because I’m close enough to my initial schedule this whole thing is still possible, still achievable. And if I can do that, I know that accomplishing this will mean so much more to me when I finally see the book and it goes on sale.